I really believe in holding your breath until at least after you pass your "sticking point," but I don't see the harm of holding all the way up. Many will warn you that this is a terrible thing to do. I don't have evidence, but I just don't believe that it's so bad. I think the risks to your back of squats and DLs with holding your breath are greater that the dangers of the Valsalva effect.

I always like to look at the common sense factor, too. As much as I like the scientific side, if it doesn't make common sense, it doesn't make sense (there was an article on t-nation a couple of months ago about this actually).

This is why i'm such an avid Dr Stuart McGill fan (the author of the article Pete sent - and a leading authority on the subject). What he says just makes sense, aside from all the research he's done or been involved in and coaches who speak highly of him and use his methods.

I won't go into it too much as i'm sure the details are in that article. However, just looking at the 'ab region', the direction of the muscle fibres, how they all 'bind together', to 'co-contract', and create stability. Like a ships mast (McGills analogy) - in the sense that the further away from the spine the muscles are, the more stability/stiffness you create i.e. bracing - filling your belly full of air whilst contracting the muscles.

In terms of 'co-contraction' - hold you're lower back and tense your abs, your lower back will also contract.

Finally, attempt to lift a maximal weight without holding your breath - it's impossible. By maximal, I mean weights 1-2 reps max. Even 3. There will be brief moment inmost difficult reps where you start holding your breath until you pass the sticking point - it's a natural reaction.

Jungledoc wrote:I don't have evidence, but I just don't believe that it's so bad. I think the risks to your back of squats and DLs with holding your breath are greater that the dangers of the Valsalva effect.

So is this like the squatting deep argument? One side says Blah, the other says Anti-Blah. (thinking about it, ithink i hold my breath on the DL too.)

I’m not going to pretend to understand a lot of what I just read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valsalva_maneuver
But basically it means your heart could “explode” from too much pressure, and there is less blood circulation while the pressure from holding your breath is present? I’m not worried about that personally, but is that the side that says not to do its concern?

Like KPj said, it feels right and feels natural. I just did it, and wasn’t even thinking about it. At the top of my squat, I took a big breath, chest up, ass out, and started. I hadn’t even realized I didn’t breathe out until I stood back up.

It is similar to about 4 to 6 weeks ago when I settled under the bar to squat and the bar just kind of rolled down from the top of my traps to about mid shoulder. It felt “more right” lower on my shoulders, and as long as I keep my hands close it just fits right in there. It wasn’t a conscious movement; it just rolled down there on its own…

I tried holding my breath on bench too, and the major thing I noticed was I could drive my legs much better when I wasn’t breathing so much. I don’t know if it is because I could think about it more, because I wasn’t doing 6,000 things at once, just 5,900, or what, but I felt my bench in my Hamstrings… So weird to me.

I have to read the entire article still, I only scanned it when Peter gave it to me last night, but thanks for the input. Now I’m super curious of what the general consensus is.

Bear in mind there's a lot of research out there. I just wanted to throw in the common sense / real world logic behind it.

It is very like the squatting deep arguement, in the sense that the 'anti deep squat' view makes no sense

On the benching. Basically, any maximal reps, you'll need to hold your breath. You'll always get more out of a lift by 'bracing' as well, which is just tensing your abs, keeping them tensed and filling your belly (not your chest!) with air. This will give you maximan contraction of the core muscles. More muscles = more weight. Also give you a better transfer of force from lower to upper body i.e. more leg drive. On DL's, it's much harder to round you're lower back when you 'brace' - even more common sense reasoning for it.

Well, you can't really fill your belly with air, although this is often said, mostly as a coaching cue. Singing teachers say the same thing for slightly different reasons. The problem is that if you think about your chest while inhaling, you tend to just use your intercostal muscles to expand the chest cavity, while allowing the abdominal organs to push the diaphragm up, or an least keep it from going down much. Try doing that while holding a hand on your abdomen. It actually goes in. If the abdomen wall is going in, the abdominal contents are going somewhere, and that is upwards.

This leaves the volume of air in the chest less than it could be. Then when you tighten your abs while lifting there's not much air in the chest to provide counter-pressure from above the diaphragm, and the diaphragm can push up further, and pressure within the abdomen doesn't go up much.

The "belly breath" involves deliberately expanding your abdomen while breathing in. The intercostals have to expand the ribcage as well. This makes more room for getting a larger volume of air in the chest, and in fact draws the diaphragm downward do draw in more air. Then the lungs are so full of air that the diaphragm can't go up as much when you tighten your abs, and you can increase the intra-abdominal pressure more, which makes the whole abdomen more rigid.

Jungledoc wrote:About your shins when you dead--try nylon work-out pants. The slick fabric may allow you to slide the knurled bar up your legs and not take skin with it. Or, at worst, they could hide your shin-pads!

Ha ha, i have been wearing pants of late... I can only imagine how bad it would be if i went bare legged.

The swelling is down today, but the shins are still tender. I think i would benifit from some SLDL anyway thou.

But yeah the pads would get super snickers where i lift. The chuck T's on my feet already make people curious. Maybe i'll get knee socks for under my pants...

My pushup numbers are stagnant, heck, they went down a little (49 reps instead of 50).
My chinup and pullup numbers, and max weights, are slightly improved, but only slightly. Still down from my personal best despite months of lifting with a strength coach.

So I've been bummed. My stamina is going down, right? Until I connected it to this datam:

I'm 10 pounds heavier than I was when I started training with my strength coach.

You know, one guy who trains at Mark Rippetoe's gym said - I'm paraphrasing here - that Rip said your hips can lock out anything you can break from the floor. Your body won't let you break the floor with stuff your hips won't be able to lock out. So if you can get the bar up, you can almost always grind out the rep. I'd still ditch if your form goes though!

nygmen wrote:Give the WO a 7. I had to help some kid that unloaded 275 from a bar one side at a time. He grabbed the empty side before the loaded side crashed to the ground. It was funny, and the poor kid was ashamed of himself. I mean he had just quarter squatted the 275, to end your workout humiliated just stinks.

That's pretty funny! Who hasn't done that at least once? Well maybe not with 275!

nygmen wrote:Give the WO a 7. I had to help some kid that unloaded 275 from a bar one side at a time. He grabbed the empty side before the loaded side crashed to the ground. It was funny, and the poor kid was ashamed of himself. I mean he had just quarter squatted the 275, to end your workout humiliated just stinks.

That's pretty funny! Who hasn't done that at least once? Well maybe not with 275!

The quarter squats is what he should have been ashamed for!

Yeah, your right, but at least he was attempting to squat.

Thing is, I really think he was trying to show me up. He kept walking over and seeing how much weight I was using. Like after every time I would put more weight on, he would walk over, look at it, and go back to what he was doing. Then when I moved on he started squatting.

I use the "box" for depth only really. I don't put my weight on my spine by sitting on the box, just down, touch & fire up. He could use that kind of guidance, but then he would have to check his ego and lower the weight. He was a young kid, and I get the feeling he will get it soon enough. I was that stupid in College, and well that stupid before I started reading things around here and such.

Completely off topic of that. I find squatting to work my Quads less and less the higher in weight i go. I feel it there, but it hurts my gultes and hips more. And by hurt, I mean good pain.